The speaker expresses admiration for Absalom as a challenging yet favorite novel, contrasting its difficulty with 'the sound and the fury'. They admit to never reading Ulysses or Finigan's Wake fully, finding the latter particularly cryptic and challenging like a complex, unsolvable puzzle. Despite its tediousness, there's a belief that Finigan's Wake holds significant value along some dimension. The speaker suggests Ulysses intersects with various interests like cosmopolitanism and moral sentiment, recommending it as a must-read. They contemplate hosting a book club to delve into challenging books like Moby Dick and Ulysses, hoping for better comprehension with help and interpretations from others.